Chapter Sixteen

A Glass Edge

The house was quiet, but Lena didn't allow herself to believe it was empty. Footsteps crept over the floor upstairs. Alistair, she assumed, hiding away in the attic.

Carlisle was somewhere, too. She saw him go upstairs, but hadn't yet seen him come down. He would, in time, to tell her off. To tell her to leave. Somehow, the thought of leaving was much easier to stomach than the thought of being yelled at. Lena certainly didn't feel any sort of attachment to the Cullens, and nothing near their odd familial bonds they felt for each other, but there was something about Carlisle's gaze that always made her want to shrink into herself in shame.

Emmett stood outside, waiting for Rosalie. They were going to join the others hunting. Piercing the neck of a much weaker animal was their preferred method of stress relief.

He kicked rocks with only a fraction of his true strength, but the tapping was maddening. Maybe he was practicing for when he was next in town, when he next had to act like he was a human.

Rosalie appeared at the base of the stairs. She had changed out of her muddied clothes, and into a casual shirt and a pair of leggings. Somehow the outfit still seemed chic, though Lena couldn't say for sure. She lived in the countryside. Fashion magazines were always outdated and overpriced.

She sneered when she saw her. "You ruined everything."

Three words. Oddly, they filled her with a sort of pride. To think that she could single-handedly destroy the life of someone she barely knew was empowering. She beat down the feeling, not out of shame or guilt, but the realisation that it would be seen as inappropriate.

"Half of my family has left because of you. Fix it."

She walked past her and out the door. Lena heard her leave with Emmett, leaves and sticks crunching beneath their shoes as they ran.

When Carlisle called her up to his office, she was apprehensive. A bubble of anxiety brewed in her gut, and without Jasper to alleviate it, she was left feeling oddly nauseated. Sickness was a memory from her human life, though not one she liked to reflect upon.

Could vampires throw up?

Carlisle always looked more serious in his office. Maybe it was the lighting, which cast shadows on his face and made him seem to Lena, for the first time, lethal. Never before had she considered that he was capable of unadulterated violence. Even when she hurt Renesmee, he kept his temper under control. Now, he appeared severe, like a man she had pushed too far.

He sat in his office chair with his head lowered, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. He took his human charade too far, didn't he? Even now he was acting as if he were being watched - blinking, sighing, breathing.

Lena moved to sit, if only to appease him. He liked when she played along, when she acted like she wasn't dead.

She sat across from him, crossed her legs, blinked. She laced her fingers and fidgeted, picking needlessly at the smooth glass-like edge of her thumbnail. She drew a deep breath. She could do it. She could pretend.

Carlisle looked at her suddenly. "Why didn't you tell me Aro was the one to bite you?"

Her fingers stilled. "I didn't trust you."

"You didn't trust me," he repeated, and looked away. "You attacked my granddaughter, and drove my son and his family from their home. You nearly killed her, and you didn't trust me?"

She could see his point. It was a stupid thing to think. She had hurt the Cullens, and not once did they turn their backs on her. But how could she trust anyone? How could she see the painting on Carlisle's wall and think nothing of it?

Carlisle was compassionate to a fault, and yet she was acutely aware that he had the upper hand. He always did. She was in his house, with a fake family who would never fail to side with him. With just one word, they would all be at her throat.

"This family has shown you nothing but kindness, Lena. Do you agree or disagree?"

She thought for a moment. "Agree."

"And you've disobeyed and disrespected us countless times. Agree, or disagree?"

She hesitated.

"Do you agree, or disagree, Lena?"

"Agree."

"I'm glad you see it the same way I do," he said, and leaned back into his chair. "I overlooked what you did to Renesmee, because I believed she was your bloodsinger, but this-"

He cut himself off, and again sighed.

"A bloodsinger, Lena, is a human whose blood calls to you. They are difficult to refrain from killing."

Bloodsinger.

Lena wasn't sure if that was quite what the girl was to her. She craved her blood, there was no doubt about it, but it wasn't quite so much out of a need she couldn't ignore as it was out of want. She was the first anomaly she met, outside of herself. A girl caught somewhere between the dead and the living, in many ways a ghost. She could project whatever reality she wanted right into her mind. And that she was surrounded by a group of vampires willing to sacrifice themselves for her safety, willing to tear Lena apart to protect her - all of it was far too strange to walk away from.

No, Lena was not called to her. The girl's blood did not sing. She didn't savour the experience of biting into her throat any more than she would anybody else. Her blood, though delicious, wasn't a craving, but an obsession born out of predatory curiosity. She attacked her because she wanted to, because she could, and because she knew she was too weak to fight back.

Lena was a predator. Nothing in her genes said she had to be fair or decent about it.

But to correct Carlisle would promise a fate rather unfavourable. She was fairly sure that, if it had been anyone else, they would have been dead by now. Carlisle only saw her as a girl. If she wanted to stay alive, that was the way it had to stay.

This lie was the only thing keeping their coven from turning on her.

So, she kept her mouth shut.

"How many lives do you think you're worth, Lena?"

It was a strange question to be asked, and as a human, she was certain she would have answered it differently. She thought differently, then.

Trauma had changed her.

"Edward, Bella and Renesmee left," he said. "Alice is gone. How many more will you drive from my home?"

"I'll fix it."

"How?"

She didn't know. Truthfully, she didn't care at all that Alice was gone. She was alive - what more could she possibly want? She was saying things for the sake of saying them, protecting herself. Faking loyalty, shame, guilt. Carlisle would like it.

"Aro has wanted Alice for decades. There is nothing he would accept in exchange for her, even your submission."

"There must be something I can do."

Carlisle shook his head. His eyes were glassy, but Lena knew from experience that not a single tear would fall.

She pressed her lips together to keep them from curling upwards. It was too easy to fool him.

"Once someone joins the Volturi, there are only two ways they can leave," he said. "They are either replaced with someone more powerful, or they are killed."

Lena swallowed. While she didn't particularly care about Alice, Jasper's devastation weighed on her, shrouding her in something dark and heavy. He had refused to so much as look at her after what happened.

How long could a vampire hold a grudge?

Carlisle said Aro wanted Alice to join the Volturi for decades. How long would it be before they discovered someone more formidable with the same skill?

Jasper would leave, then - or he would try to - but would Aro permit it?

Rosalie was right. Carlisle's strange little family was falling apart, and it was all because of her. How sick was it, then, that she was the only one who couldn't leave.

Carlisle stood, and left the room. Lena heard his shoes on the stairs, heard his feet pass by on the floor below, and then the front door slam.

Once he was outside, he ran.

Lena sank back into the chair. A breathless laugh escaped her lips.

She was trapped.